Sour Notes

There were 30 French schoolchildren waiting nervously at the gate of the U.S. national team's training grounds when the bus pulled up Tuesday. The children of this tiny village in Beaujolais country couldn't have cared less about the team's dispiriting 2-0 loss to Germany the night before. To them, the players are celebrities, men who make a living playing a game they love, whose exploits are beamed live to millions. As the team disembarked after a sleepy 1 hour and 40-minute train ride...

NEW YORK - A loud crashing sound emanated from the Cubs' showers shortly after Carlos Marmol blew a three-run ninth-inning lead Sunday in a stunning 4-3 loss to the Mets. No matter who threw a large metal object that made enough noise to cause everyone in the clubhouse to turn their heads, it was obvious the frustration of Marmol's season-long nightmare was shared by fans and players alike. So what should the Cubs say to those fans who believe the team should just eat the...

A decade or so from now, when the world has awakened from the bad dream known as the 20th Century, students of musical history will need to resolve many apparent paradoxes. Here is one: Why did the production of exciting and durable compositions begin to fall off sharply after World War I and go into a dramatic nosedive after World War II, just when recordings, radio and other technologies were making music available to greater numbers of listeners than ever before? Here is another: Why have there been so few...

Kids can be hard on their band instruments. School districts can be even harder on the people who repair the instruments. Since summer 2010, Sue Williams has fixed musical instruments broken by students in the Gary Community School Corp. - saxophones, flutes, drumheads, whatever. The process was always the same. She would pick up the instruments and take them to her home in Hobart, Ind., where she'd estimate the cost for repairs, then submit the estimates to the school...

Thank you for the editorial, "Sour notes on Nightingales." For exploiting and demeaning the image of the profession of nursing at a time when there is a national shortage in the field, NBC deserves your condemnation. Producer Spelling should consider his "creative license" in portraying nursing students as lingerie models and its effect on the supply of licensed professional nurses in the future. Perhaps one day he will need to rely on the care, compassion and clinical judgment of a fully dressed professional...

At Tim Beckman's introductory news conference as Illinois' football coach, he spoke passionately about transforming the team into annual Big Ten contenders. It might be a slow process. After his first 12 games, the Illini (2-10, 0-8) are at the bottom of the charts. The season ended with yet another blowout loss, this time stinging worse with a 50-14 debacle at rival Northwestern. Beckman acknowledged things need to change before his second season in Champaign. "It's just the...

A hail of pebbles rains on the car. "The guest is God," a traditional Indian saying, clearly no longer holds true for Shahjadpur. This sleepy village in rural Bengal, one of the key entrepots of Asia's alms trade, has suddenly acquired celebrity status. And the locals are not liking it. The outsider is greeted with suspicion and palpable hostility. A group of bearded young men in checked lungis (sarongs) guard the dirt track leading to Shahjadpur. "Go away, go away," they chorus.

ATLANTA - The farewell tour is over for Chipper Jones. It's time that we begin another one - this time for the concept of six-man crews in the playoffs. They have to go, as Sam Holbrook demonstrated in the first game of the 2012 postseason. Umpires were placed down the left- and right-field lines in the playoffs largely to help on home run calls, and those calls now are reviewed electronically. Caught or trapped balls soon may be as well. And in the meantime the guys...

Not every customer asks the question, but so many do that Jim Pokracki of Homewood and Kare McKean of Markham are thinking of taking up music. "People walk in and they say, `OK, who plays?' " McKean said. "Neither of us does, but maybe we should take lessons." The question is a natural one at Mistro's, a restaurant located in Tinley Park's Threshold Music Center, which provided the inspiration for the restaurant's ambience. A colorful mural in one corner shows an orchestra tuning...

PARIS (Reuters) - The meteoric rise of a natural, healthy alternative to sugar - a holy grail for the food industry - might just be a little too good to be true. In two years stevia, a plant used for centuries by Paraguay's Guarani Indians, has shot to prominence in products by Coca-Cola, Danone and Merisant. Encouraged by distrust of artificial sweeteners and demand for natural products, they have turned to extract of stevia, which is up to 300 times sweeter than traditional...

Dude sings like a lady for MTV `Give me a chance," 18-year-old EDDIE JOHNIGAN kept yelling to the panel of judges seated under a tent in Lincoln Park. "Just give a brother a chance!" Never mind that the judges -- including JOHNNY WRIGHT and choreographer LAURIE ANN GIBSON -- were in Chicago a few days ago specifically looking for pop-singing females for SEAN "P. DIDDY" COMBS' next edition of MTV's "Making the Band." After much pestering, Wright, who has...

What happened on the lakefront Sunday reminded us how important Jay Cutler is to the Bears. The Bears haven't been in many situations recently when they needed Cutler the way they needed him Sunday. But to win late in the regular season and in the playoffs, a team needs a quarterback to play the way Cutler did against the Chargers. Now, it seems, they need him more than ever. Cutler has a broken thumb. The Bears have broken spirits. This isn't what a win is supposed to...

Hartigan: Rise again? As the state's new senior U.S. senator, Paul Simon is now The Man To See about getting federal judiciary, U.S. attorney and marshal appointments in Illinois. So . . . watch for his close friend and former Illinois Atty. Gen. Neil Hartigan to move to the head of the list of aspirants to replace Fred Foreman as U.S. attorney in Chicago. That would put Hartigan-a big Bill Clinton supporter-in a perfect high-profile jumping-off position to run...

Q: We just got around to reading the fine print in our lease, and buried in the "no illegal activities" clause, we discovered to our astonishment a sentence that says we are prohibited from "conducting vocal or instrumental practicing or instruction. " Our middle-schooler has signed up for the band and will need to practice his flute daily. Can our landlord prohibit this? A: Your question is a good example of the dangers of fine print — and of failing to read it. Perhaps you...

How much lower will Mayor Harold Washington's top aides stoop in trying to humiliate Pat Quinn, the reformer who got the boot last week as city revenue director? Apparently it's not enough for mayoral Chief of Staff Ernest Barefield and administrative assistant Lucille Dobbins to unfairly label Quinn a poor administrator. Now they`re treating "Mr. Clean" like a common thief. Quinn arrived at City Hall Saturday to clean out his office (as was prearranged with Barefield), but he was barred by police--on...

Few beers are a better match for the decadent, fatty foods we eat in winter than a Flanders red ale and its close, often indistinguishable, cousin oud bruin (old brown). That's because the two styles are sour and acidic, with sharp, fruity notes that often bring to mind black cherries, raisins and prunes, along with hints of oak and vanilla. The beers' tartness complements the bold, savory flavors of a dish like pork roulade or the richness of a flourless chocolate cake, says Lauren Salazar, sensory...

It has been a tough year for jazz clubs in Chicago. In July, Club Blujazz — a plushly appointed room on the North Side — abruptly closed after four months in business. Its owners, guitarist Greg Pasenko and violinist Diane Delin (a married couple), had envisioned Club Blujazz as a sanctuary for serious listening. They rapidly made good on their plans, scoring a coup with a rare Chicago appearance in April by pianist Fred Hersch, who drew large crowds. The room...

This dust-up started nearly a year ago on New Year's Day at a tavern in Aspen, Colo. A table of locals wanted to hear singer Dan Sheridan play his most popular song, "Big Money. " He was taken aback, but he strummed his guitar and sang: I think big money sucks Please write that down Please take a look what it did to this town Trophy houses, trophy wives, trophy people leading trophy lives. The following Monday, Sheridan was fired.